The first anniversary of the Newsplex Asia convergent newsroom lab will be marked by the first OpenNews.Hack Asia 2013, a unique hackathon plus accelerator that aims to support media creation and innovation and open new ways for the public to consume and share news.
The event, organized by the Singapore-based Newsplex Asia and Nhüke.Labs Pte Ltd, will kick off with an Asia Editors Round Table on 27 September, where Asian editors can share with hackers and technology geeks their most far-reaching ideas for producing a better journalism for the future - and to get a chance to see them become a reality. Editors will also be invited to serve as mentors, along with internet pure-players, on Hack Day on 5 October.
The winners of the hackathon will get a chance to present their solutions at Digital Media Asia on November 12-14 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
OpenNews.Hack Asia's twitter hashtag is #opennewshack.
Newsplex Asia is a convergent training newsroom and the result of a partnership between the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the World Association of Newspapers and Publishers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). It is one of three WAN-IFRA Newsplexes in the world - the others being in the USA and Germany.
"Today's newsrooms recognize that it is no longer enough to be able to write or shoot well. Busy readers and viewers expect their news fast and to be packaged in a digestible manner that is interactive and engaging," said Lau Joon-Nie, Assistant Director of Newsplex Asia.
"We want to find faster and better ways to produce, distribute and share news. This is a challenge that doesn't only involve journalists and editors, but also developers, programmers, designers and technopreneurs. OpenNews.Hack Asia provides a unique platform to bring these diverse but very complementary skill sets together to create new apps and services that could change the way we consume our news in the near future."
Thomas Jacob, Chief Operating Officer of WAN-IFRA, said: "News publishers must not only react to the disruption that technology brings into their business model. They must lead the change and drive innovation by bringing together editors and the technologists to enable better story telling. WAN-IFRA aims to help them by organizing a series of ideathons and hackathons alongside our digital media conference series across the globe".
Alan Soon, Managing Editor of Yahoo South East Asia, a sponsor of the event, said:
"Technology and internet have completely changed the way news is reported and consumed today. The lines between reporter and readers are blurring. Being at the forefront of this change with a number of platform and personalization innovations, we have a deep interest in challenging the boundaries. Hence, we are very excited about supporting OpenNews.Hack Asia 2013, and looking forward to hacks that will inspire us all."
The key objectives of OpenNews.Hack Asia are to catalyze digital innovation, strengthen journalism education, support social media journalism, disrupt/ignite the news industry, promote interactive information and data visualization, and train journalists to collect and disseminate news across web 2.0 channels.
The OpenNews.Hack aims to:
• Promote digital citizenship;
• Support innovation in new ways to digitally inform and engage people and communities;
• Accelerate free exchange of information, cultivate critical inquiry and investigation, nurture the power of impactful story telling;
• Rethink how the news is constructed and how information gets produced to open new ways for people to consume and share news.
Newsplex Asia hosts professional training and workshops for the Asia Pacific media industry, focusing on media convergent journalism and the development and implementation of integrated newsroom strategies. The centre brings the various media platforms together in one convenient, collaborative space. Through carefully considered planning and physical layout, it enables and empowers journalists, editors, designers and developers to create and communicate in the most efficient ways possible in order to deliver content speedily and seamlessly.
